


goin' nowhere

by pilindiel



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drama & Romance, Dreamsharing, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-14
Updated: 2018-09-14
Packaged: 2019-07-12 00:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15984077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pilindiel/pseuds/pilindiel
Summary: He yawns and rolls over, smooshing his face deeper into the somewhat dank smell of his pillow, hoping to get a couple more hours of sleep before his dreaded alarm wakes him up. Blearily, he cracks open and eye at his clock just to infer how much time he has left to dedicate to the wonderful comfort that is his bed. It's stupid, but he could honestly stay here forever. It's that fucking nice.The lime green background of his clock radio takes a second to settle into focus, but once his brain registers the blinking black numbers, it happily informs him the time is 10:27 am.Work starts in three minutes. He should have been up an hour ago.Huh. Well.





	goin' nowhere

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little bit angry when everyone's around  
> But I get a little lonely when no one's out.  
> I feel my demons misleading me.

You know that one song that people always associate with mornings? It has like, flutes and strings and shit and feels so fucking glorious when you're listening to it cause the music builds and swells and presents you with an overwhelming sense of peace and calm? You know the one. It's by that one guy with some German sounding name and was in that movie with Charlton Heston in the 70's and you didn't know what they were making the food out of until the end where Heston was like “They're making our food out of people!”

Yeah. That song.

That's what Jean Kirschtein feels like when he opens his eyes early Thursday morning. (The song thing, not the making-people-into-food thing.) His bed is ridiculously comfortable, the warmth from snuggling under his duvet contrasting the slightly cool air of his shared apartment. His room is a bit of a mess, but there's just enough early morning sunlight creeping through the shades that it casts the space in a cozy glow. It feels _awesome_.

He fucking swears he can hear birds chirping outside his window.

It's _that_ blissful.

He yawns and rolls over, smooshing his face deeper into the somewhat dank smell of his pillow, hoping to get a couple more hours of sleep before his dreaded alarm wakes him up. Sleepily, he cracks open and eye at his clock just to infer how much time he has left to dedicate to the wonderful comfort that is his bed. It's stupid, but he could honestly stay here forever. It's that fucking nice.

The lime green background of his clock radio takes a second to settle into focus, but once his brain registers the blinking black numbers, it happily informs him the time is 10:27 am.

Work starts in three minutes. He should have been up an hour ago.

_Huh. Well_.

The sound of his sheets slapping against the wall is the only prelude to Jean as he all but flies out of his room, nearly tripping as he tugs on a pair of black pants strewn on his floor and slides into their small living area before lunging across the floor to grab a poptart from the breakfast bar – the quickest food product his rushed mind can think to get. He skids to a stop, however, when he notices a mop of messy reddish brown hair bobbing about the kitchen. Connie, Jean and Sasha have been friends since they were old enough to talk, but Connie and Sasha have been attached at the hip for even longer, so when Jean and Connie became roommates after college, Sasha's naturally over every day (even though she has her own place to live.) Hell, the apartment feels weirdly empty when she's _not_ here, and Connie's demeanor significantly changes as he rarely comes out of his room. _Too busy sulking_ , Jean guesses. It's honestly kind of cute, in a pathetic way. Though they usually eat like a den of wolves when they're together and though they're pretty loud, Jean can't ask for better roommates or better friends.

What he means is, it's not uncommon to see Sasha around. What _is_ uncommon is that currently, Sasha is in their kitchen, cooking what smells like bacon, in nothing but a pair of bright blue boxers.

And when Jean says nothing, he really means _nothing_. Girl is 100% shirtless and the boxers she's wearing are barely clinging to her thin hipbones as she sluggishly moves around their small kitchen. Fuck, this is awkward. Fuck, those are probably Connie's. Jean pointedly looks away as he shoves on his dress shoes, trying not to audibly gag. He loves Sasha to pieces, but this is like seeing his sister naked and makes him feel queasy and uncomfortable in a thousand different squicky ways. Ugh. _No, thank you_. It doesn't help knowing that if Jean brings this shit up later that the Wonder Twins will vehemently deny such an event ever happening. Their “not-a-relationship” relationship is so obnoxious it's become a running gag among their group of friends, despite Connie's red-faced embarrassment about it and Sasha's abrupt subject changes.

Behind closed doors, however, it's a completely different story and Jean is lucky enough to always be front row center when shit like this happens. And though he's more than happy that they trust him enough to not hide their involvement from him, Jean almost wishes they were more quiet about how involved they really are. For god sakes, _Sasha has bite marks on her collarbone._

As if sensing Jean is trying to avoid looking straight at her, Sasha turns and blinks her chestnut brown eyes at him sleepily, giving Jean a small wave before going back to her bacon with a wistful sigh. Shaking his head, Jean hastily grabs a strawberry poptart packet from the box they have placed on the breakfast bar, buttons up the bottom button of his polo shirt and races out, giving Sasha a frantic wave as he throws open the door.

He hears an encouraging, though fatigued chant of “Run, Jean, run!” from her just as their front door slams closed.

* * *

 Surprisingly enough, he isn't late for work.

Probably because he forgot about daylight savings time and he actually doesn't start work for another fucking hour and a half.

A fact that resident asshole and best frenemy in the world, Eren Jaeger, is far too eager to remind him about.

As if summoned, Eren's dark hair perks over the top of the dirty, pastel cubical wall that separates them, his bright green eyes following shortly after to stare Jean down with something akin to malice or mischief.

Jean's not sure which is worse.

With a disgruntled grunt, Jean shoves on his headset and signs in to his wheezing computer, squinting as the poor thing flickers into life.

He fucking hates this job.

Well, that's not entirely true. Jean hates that _this_ is his job.

And even then, it's by no means a terrible place: the call center the twenty two year old works at has a ridiculous amount of benefits, including healthcare and dental, and he even gets paid above minimum wage which is almost unheard of for someone just out of college. Apparently the person in charge of hiring, a peppy if not incredibly odd person simply named Hanji Zoe, loves picking stray kids who's majors in college were absolutely fuck-all useless in the real world. Which may explain why the majority of people working in this dead-end job are barely over twenty five. The only three exceptions are the supervisors themselves: the aforementioned Hanji Zoe, a short man who perpetually has the look of someone fed up with everything known simply as “Levi”, and a kind if not incredibly intimidating blond by the name of Erwin Smith.

Even his coworkers seem to be pretty mild mannered aside from the obvious fucking asshole every career path seems to have despite everyone agreeing that, yeah, this person is a serious douche nozzle.

No. What pisses Jean off most about this job is that, throughout his four years of college, paying his own way through art school because his parents told him time and again how fucking useless that degree would be and after working harder than ever to graduate with pretty fucking high honors, working at a call center with a similar group of useless drop outs and failures is all his life has amounted to. Despite years of trying to prove his asshole step – father wrong, he has done nothing but prove him right.

Fuck. Maybe Jean was always born to be a failure.

It's a simple enough job, though. Jean and his coworkers actually help a shit ton of people: the company is contracted by huge companies like Google, Microsoft and stuff to make sure their workers have people to take care of their kids so they don't miss work and screw over the company.

Basically, Scout Regiment and Co. are the fucking middle men for babysitters. They don't even get the chance to watch TV once the kids go to bed.

All Jean knows is, the second he gets home he's going to pound back all the Bud Light in the fridge and pass out on their lime-green couch in an attempt to drown the gloom and doom from his mundane, shitty life with the shittiest light beer he can get his hands on.

He just has to get through this day.  Should be simple enough - nothing interesting ever happens to Jean.

* * *

 Fog clouds Jean's vision and it takes him a moment to get his barrings. There's nothing around as far as Jean can tell, but the oppressive mist in the air makes it impossible to be certain. He squints, but all that does is narrow his field of vision and he almost cusses; he can barely see his fucking hand in front of his face and he thinks squinting like a tool is gonna help him?

Truly, the work of a genius. Four years of college definitely paid off.

But there is an unnatural light, like the sun is trying to break through a dense cloud covering and Jean groans, scrubbing a hand down his face.

He's dreaming. And, better yet, he's had this specific dream so many times before he's lost count. Jean doesn't believe in the whole “reoccurring dreams must mean something important” bullshit, but he has to admit this is getting really fucking old. Only _Jean_ could have a dream this ridiculously stupid and cryptic. He can practically feel the rough fabric of the throw pillow scratching against his cheek on his and Connie's couch as the mist swirls around him, coiling like a snake as it shrouds his vision behind a veil of thick, damp air. He'll probably wake up tomorrow morning with a sore neck and hate himself for the rest of the day as he sits in his plastic roller chair at work, but right now he doesn't give much of a shit.

Hopefully he'll have a slow day at Survey tomorrow; he doesn't really want to deal with any more irate customers on the phone and he can barely keep his frustrations under control as is. A fact that Eren is always way too fucking excited to remind him of.

At least he knows what to expect: he'll take a couple steps, trip through a hole in the air, and fall through the sky. Every time it happens, the world flies by him through a cacophony of sounds and colors, so dazzling and bright that he wants to reach out and run his fingers through them, gathering up the purples and greens and reds on his fingertips to paint the dizzying white clouds like a beautiful, blank canvas. But his arms always hang uselessly at his sides and the colors linger forever out of his reach. The clouds, white as snow, stay untouched and mock him as he gets further and further away til the ground envelops him in a dark, cold embrace. He's had this dream at least once or twice a month since high school and honestly, the rush of adrenaline that came from waking up with a jolt has died down considerably over the years. Now, Jean doesn't even break a sweat before he's back in Sleepland, wondering why he hasn't drawn or painted a goddamn thing in over a year and a half and debating which direction his life is going in.

If he asked his step – father, that direction would be _“No where, fast.”_

Shrugging off his hindsight, Jean takes several cautious steps forward, waiting for the inevitable push that tosses him out of the sky and into the waiting grip of the Earth. His steps fall heavily onto an unseen floor, his Converse sliding a bit on the slickness of the ground. No doubt from the wet, thick fog permeating every perpetual corner of this place. He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans, takes a deep breath, and walks further into the endless fog.

It might have been an hour, or it might have been a couple minutes, but Jean is pretty damn sure something's up.

For one thing, he isn't falling helplessly through the goddamn sky and that alone is making him nervous.

For another, the weird glow is now narrowing to small pinpoints, taking shape distantly in the fog.

 Jean's heart catches, words sticking in his throat.  His whole body is frozen as the shape swirls, manifests, solidifies.

It's a person - or at least, person-shaped - and Jean's pulse is loud in his ears.

"Who are you?" he croaks.

The shadow turns and Jean can just barely make out a tuft of scruffy brown hair, a flash of freckled skin, and bright, quizzical eyes.

The stranger opens their mouth.

"Mar-"

**Author's Note:**

> This was a story I wrote back in 2013. Can you tell? Lmao All it's missing is mentions of flannel and the red beanie of fate, isn't it??
> 
> Just imagine tiny college me, with huge aspirations of writing the next greatest jm fic only for my laptop to die and losing ALLLL my progress, including an in-depth outline for at least nine chapters. I was, understandably, devastated.
> 
> But I was thinking about it again recently - chatting about it with [Lindsey](http://commodorecliche.tumblr.com/) and [Christina](http://rhetoricfemme.tumblr.com/) \- and I stumbled on my old dropbox password, and god, it was all there. 
> 
> Reading over it again makes me feel a little self-conscious because of how different and nostalgic it feels, but I tried to keep it as authentic to the original draft as possible (filling in the gaps here and there, of course.)
> 
> I even kept the American Authors aspect - I was pretty obsessed with them when this fic was gestating back in 2013, so...sorry??
> 
> hmu on [tumblr](http://pilindiel.tumblr.com/) and let me know what ya'll think!


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